Keen Ice

The mystique around Calumet is such that it aptly discloses a nearly perfect anagram for "Camelot." Both words evoke, not just an idealized past, but a yearning for the restoration of standards eroded during our unchivalrous times. Of course, Calumet has itself had its modern lapses, but there's no mistaking the wholesome intentions animating its latest ownership. True, the methods of Brad Kelley and his team sometimes strike the orthodox observer as idiosyncratic, to put it mildly. But it makes sense to write a new chapter, in their own hand,...

4th-Indiana Grand, $31,000, Msw, 5-3, 2yo, 5f, 1:00.81, gd, neck. ICY STORM (c, 2, Keen Ice--Downton My Lady, by Pioneerof the Nile) was sent off at 7-2 to become the first winner for his 2015 GI Travers S.-winning freshman sire (by Curlin). Part of a five-way skirmish for the early lead, the dark bay colt sat second as Gormleys Got Game (Gormley) broke away from the pack after a quarter in :22.71. He surged by that foe inside the final furlong and just held off the late rush of Atta...

This is the second part of the latest instalment in our ongoing series assessing stallion options for the new covering season, now tackling sires who have just sold their first yearlings. The first part, which appeared in Tuesday's edition, can be read here. Dixie Union has achieved quite a legacy as a broodmare sire and, following on from Mohaymen (Tapit), two other stallions in this group are out of his daughters. KLIMT (Quality Road-Inventive by Dixie Union) has maintained an industrial output through his first three books at Darby Dan,...

We've taken a breather in this series during the January Sale, where I shared many conversations on themes raised in its first two parts--notably the market's addiction to unproven stallions. Time after time, it was the same story. A shrug of the shoulders, a helpless spreading of the hands: "Yes, we know it's nuts. But we have to make the game pay." Fair enough. It's a bit like the individual who asks why he or she should make a massively inconvenient personal sacrifice, with regard to the climate crisis, when...

The morning after winning the GI Travers S. with Keen Ice (Curlin) trainer Dale Romans noted that the victory was one of the most exciting and overwhelming of his career. "It's been overwhelming since last night," he said while standing outside the barn and still soaking in post-race glory. "I've been in a lot of big events and won a lot of big races, but the lingering effect of this one is bigger than [winning] the Preakness or any of them. I had so many calls my phone froze up...